Calling Calling Calling Me Read online

  Calling, Calling, Calling Me

  Natasha Washington

  Strangest of Places Press

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also by Natasha Washington

  Prologue

  The ad read:

  We are awesome, and if you’re awesome too, we can be awesome together!!!!!

  Our apt in the Castro has lots of light and fun people, with one bedroom available that is ideal for a student or young professional. Musicians live here, so you can’t be too afraid of noise. We’re respectful, though, and we won’t be loud when you have an exam or whatever. We’re good people. We bet you’re good people too.

  Email us your deets: Where are you from? Where are you going? What’s your opinion on offshore drilling and Cher and kohlrabi? You know, the usual.

  * * *

  Patrick typed out an email requesting a time to come see the place immediately, then added:

  * * *

  From: outside Fresno. There’s…not a lot to say about Fresno.

  Going: to college! To do writing and theater-type things that will surely help my chances of gainful employment when I graduate.

  Offshore drilling: is bad. I would imagine onshore drilling isn’t that great either.

  Cher: is a goddess in Moonstruck. Now her cheekbones look like they’re trying to escape the prison of her skin. Terrifying and yet compelling.

  Kohlrabi: I don’t know what this is, but it sounds like it could be dangerous. I’m sure I’ll learn about it in San Francisco. I have a feeling that city has a lot to teach me.

  1

  When Patrick had announced to his parents that he wanted to live off-campus his freshman year, they had not been thrilled, to put it mildly. The words over my cold dead body may have been uttered.

  Patrick’s parents had often underestimated how stubborn he was, however. He’d waited his whole life to move to San Francisco, and he’d rather be truly in the middle of the city than cloistered on campus, which was so far south that it was only barely in the city at all.

  He’d cited all the appropriate stats about how many other students lived off-campus, the on-campus housing shortage that meant other freshmen were living off-campus too, the ways he could potentially save money on food and other expenses. His parents had finally given in, because there was nothing that couldn’t be resolved with a well-composed PowerPoint presentation.

  And so, on a Saturday in July, Patrick drove up to San Francisco with his mom—even though he didn’t want to drive up with her, God. He was eighteen and he’d had his license for an entire month and he could drive himself.

  Still, his mom had insisted, and she was getting all weepy, and Patrick was not immune to mom tears. He’d sighed and said, “Fine, you can come. I haven’t left yet. I am still your baby boy. Stop being so annoying.”

  “I just want to know that you have somewhere to live that’s safe and comfortable,” his mom said, her eyes misty. “Is that so wrong?”

  Patrick rolled his eyes and said, “Okay, but I get to see the places by myself first,” and then turned up the Hamilton soundtrack really loud.

  It was a Saturday afternoon and they had five apartments to see, but the first two were too small and smelled weird. At the third, a round, heavily accented man wearing cutoff shorts and bunny slippers tried to convince Patrick that: The fog eez calming, no? We get sun sometime, we do!

  Patrick was starting to worry maybe San Francisco was just like this, filled with strangely shaped apartments smothered in fog and inhabited by people who constantly cooked broccoli.

  The fourth, though, was more promising—a three-bedroom Victorian in the Castro that looked nice from the outside: well-maintained, not shabby, painted pale blue with dark blue trim. They didn’t have houses like this in Fresno.

  They definitely didn’t have dudes walking around in skinny cuffed jeans and T-shirts that said It’s Only Gay If You Swallow, which, wow, that made Patrick blush and then step in front of his mom so she didn’t see.

  “Oh, Patrick, this place is so lovely,” she said, smiling, blissful in her ignorance.

  “Mom, please go get some coffee,” Patrick said, and waved her away. This time, he was immune to the way she pouted.

  He climbed the short flight of stairs to the front door and rang the doorbell. There was a crash from inside and some loud laughter, and then this big, tall guy wearing a Vancouver Canucks T-shirt and sweatpants swung open the door, looked Patrick up and down, and shouted over his shoulder, “Did somebody order pizza?”

  Patrick said, “No, uh, I’m—”

  “I definitely didn’t order pizza,” the tall guy said. “I always remember when I do.”

  A much smaller curly-haired guy in dark jeans and a tight Outside Lands T-shirt pushed the tall guy aside and said, “Are you Patrick? You’re totally on time! I’m Josh, and this is my really rude roommate Mike. He’s Canadian, but don’t hold it against him. They don’t teach people manners in Canada, they only teach them how to hunt.”

  Josh’s eyes were so bright, a golden brown flecked with green. Patrick shook Josh’s hand, feeling calluses graze his palm. They tickled.

  He must play guitar, Patrick thought, and then: Hot.

  Josh beckoned Patrick inside, and Mike started talking about how he totally knew how to hunt.

  “I am, like, the best shot ever. I’m awesome at that hunting game on PS4—I am to that hunting game what Kai is to Dance Dance Revolution, dude—”

  Josh cast this sidelong look at Patrick, like: If you want to live in this apartment, you better get used to this.

  The apartment was a total mess on the inside, but was still really pretty—hardwood floors everywhere there wasn’t sports equipment or musical instruments or random pieces of clothing, big bay windows in the living room that let in lots of light. Josh explained there were three bedrooms, and he and Kai shared one, and Freddy and Mike shared another, but there was a third that was kind of small, really only big enough for one person. They used to have a girl living there, Alexis, but she’d moved in with her boyfriend in Nob Hill (Mike called it Snob Hill and then corrected it to the Tender Nob) and they really needed a fifth to be able to make rent. The Castro was awesome, but not cheap.

  Turned out Josh was the only one of them still in college—“The baby, isn’t he cute?” Mike said, and pinched his cheeks—and all the rest of them worked at various places, like Freddy was a bartender at this club in the Mission, and Mike was an elementary school teacher (Really? Patrick thought, but he guessed Mike was goofy and maybe that was good for working with kids), and Kai was a hip-hop dance instructor and also danced in a real company that was, “like, so unbelievable, dude, they will blow
your mind.”

  Josh said this as if Patrick hadn’t walked into the apartment and their lives two minutes before, as if they’d known each other forever and were trying to decide what to do tonight, where to go out.

  Patrick was completely overwhelmed and totally giddy, excited because Josh was excited. Josh tugged him along from room to room, pointing out how they had a giant smart TV “where we have Westworld marathons sometimes, that shit is insane in HD!” and a kitchen with an espresso machine because “Kai is weirdly particular about coffee, like he’s been on this whole kick where he brings home a different kind each week from whatever single-origin, local producer he finds and hosts a tasting that’s sort of like wine-tasting, except even more pretentious? And apparently as effective for getting in someone’s pants.”

  Josh showed him the room, which looked like…well, a small bedroom, basically, but it had a large window that took up almost an entire wall, and sun slanted in and cut stripes across the wood floors. It was empty because they were trying to rent it out, but it seemed so strange in contrast with the clutter and energy of the rest of the place.

  “I wish I could have the single,” Josh said wistfully, “but money’s so tight already, and I don’t even know if I could fit all my instruments in here. Anyway, it’s a good deal for the city. It’s all relative, right? Where else are you going to find rent this cheap with all the brogrammers driving up cost of living like it’s their actual job?”

  Patrick nodded like he understood, though he’d never looked for an apartment on his own in his life, never lived anywhere but home, and what could he possibly know about relative rents in the Bay Area? He liked that Josh seemed to think he might know about such things, though.

  Josh chattered on and smiled a lot and talked with his hands, and Patrick tried to pay attention, but he couldn’t, really, because Josh was maybe the most attractive guy Patrick had ever seen in real life. He was small but built so nicely, and the fabric of his T-shirt strained a little against his biceps when he moved his arms. He had the kind of dark, curly hair that looked perfect no matter how much of a mess it was, and when he smiled, his whole face lit up.

  Patrick was so distracted, he didn’t even realize Josh had asked him a question until he touched his arm with his fingertips and said, “Patrick?”

  Patrick blinked and cleared his throat and stuttered, “Y-yes?”

  “Do you have any questions for us?” Josh asked.

  Patrick sort of felt like Josh should be the one asking him questions. Wasn’t Patrick the stranger who might be living with them, this random guy who’d walked in off the street and wanted to inhabit their awesome San Francisco apartment even though he was barely out of high school and drove here today in his parents’ Toyota Camry from the mid-2000s?

  “Um…the rent is what you said in the email, right?” Patrick said.

  “Totally,” Josh said, nodding. “And—you’d be honest with me, right, dude? You can pay it?”

  Patrick was ready to, like, do a credit check or show proof of his parent’s income, but Josh was looking at him with his wide hazel eyes, seemingly ready to take him at his word.

  He couldn’t believe it might actually be this easy.

  “Definitely,” Patrick said, his throat dry. “Don’t you need—don’t you want to ask me—”

  “I want to ask you lots of things,” Josh said, “but I hope I can ask them after you move in.”

  Patrick’s stomach dropped. Was this really happening?

  “Not to be too forward or whatever,” Josh backtracked, “because this is an important decision and everything, and you can have time to think about it, but I have pretty good instincts, you know?”

  Patrick nodded, his mouth open a little.

  “I think you belong here,” Josh said, and squeezed Patrick’s shoulder.

  Patrick imagined he could feel all the imprints of his fingertips, traces of heat, even after Josh let go.

  * * *

  Patrick filled out an application on the spot for their landlord while Mike watched some classic hockey game on ESPN2 on the truly enormous TV. Josh made them tea as the fog began to move in, the wispy gray obscuring the sunset.

  “The weather here is so weird,” Mike told him. “Josh grew up here so it’s normal for him, but seriously. Sometimes it’s sunny here, but you walk five blocks and the weather’s different.”

  “They’re called microclimates,” Josh said, and handed Patrick a mug of sweet-smelling tea. “At least we don’t have snow, Canadian.”

  “Snow rules,” Mike said. “If it snowed here, we could do some wicked sledding.”

  “You’re from Fresno, yeah?” Josh said. “You said in your email.”

  “Yeah,” Patrick said. “Right outside Fresno.”

  “The Central Valley!” Josh exclaimed, and he didn’t even sound like he was being facetious. “The Breadbasket of America.”

  “You really don’t have to say nice things about Fresno,” Patrick said. “There aren’t many nice things to say, trust me.”

  What Patrick didn’t say: that Fresno was the place he’d always felt like a freak, where he’d been shoved into lockers and taunted in hallways and taught to keep quiet or pay the price. Fresno had been his personal prison, haunted and hateful. Maybe Fresno had other virtues for other people, but this was the history it held for Patrick. It was a history so heavy, sometimes Patrick didn’t know how to breathe under its weight.

  As kind and open-hearted as Josh was being, however, this seemed like an intense confession to make at a first meeting. Patrick might want to wait until he’d signed a lease before letting his personal trauma spill out all over the place.

  Josh looked at him quizzically, as if he wanted to ask something, but then he took a sip of his tea and said, “Well, San Francisco is great. I think you’ll love it.”

  Patrick was already well on his way to loving it. He was about to tell Josh this when his phone rang loudly, “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina,” which he’d meant to change, but then his mom was asking him something about registration and buying stuff at Target, and he’d gotten distracted and forgot.

  Josh began singing the song, loudly. He had a nice voice, even though he was hamming it up.

  “Freak,” Mike said. “You really do know every song ever.”

  “Not every song,” Josh said. “I’m sure there are Canadian classics I’ve overlooked. Anyway, that song is famous and was in a movie starring Madonna.”

  “Hello?” Patrick said, cupping his hand around his ear so he could hear over Mike and Josh arguing about God knows what.

  “Pat, are you still at that apartment?” his mom asked. “We’re going to miss your six o’clock appointment.”

  “Mom, I want to live here,” Patrick said.

  Josh was looking at him now, and he was smiling.

  “But you haven’t seen very many places!” she said. “Are you—”

  “I’m sure,” Patrick said. “We can go home sooner than we planned.”

  “Wait, dude,” Josh said, grasping Patrick’s arm. Patrick was going to have to get used to how tactile Josh was. “Is your mom here? Can we meet your mom?”

  Patrick wanted to die of embarrassment. He knew he was flushing when he said, “No, I mean, yes, she’s here, but—”

  “Is that the roommate?” his mom said. “Of course, I want to meet him.”

  “Um, there are four,” Patrick said. “I haven’t even met them all yet.”

  “Well, you better before we go,” she said. “We’ll have dinner; it’ll be lovely.”

  “Mom,” Patrick groaned, but Josh snatched his phone away, saying, “Mrs. Maloney? Hello, I’m Josh. Your son is amazing. I’m sure you know that already, but I wanted to tell you.”

  There was a pause, and Josh was smiling again. Patrick didn’t like this at all. The things his mom could say to ruin everything—

  “Oh, I know, those store displays on Church Street are quite something, very racy,” Josh said. “But don�
�t worry, Mrs. Maloney. We’ll keep Patrick out of trouble.”

  He winked at Patrick, and in that moment Patrick knew he was in so much trouble already.

  Patrick’s mom did come over, much to Patrick’s consternation, but it went better than he’d expected. Josh was, of course, entirely charming, and Mike even put on real pants and washed all the dishes in the kitchen, so it didn’t look quite so much like a dish-based natural disaster had happened there.

  Kai showed up around seven p.m., fresh from his dance class and a little sweaty. He went with the flow, as if he was used to unexpected houseguests who were potential roommates showing up all the time with their mothers in tow. Kai was super-easy on the eyes, well-muscled and slender with black hair and pretty slanted dark brown eyes. His good looks were unsurprising given that he was a dancer—was it a thing about dancers, that they were all so attractive?—but he was also very friendly. He and Patrick’s mom bonded over some ballet Patrick didn’t even know his mom had seen.

  Freddy arrived a few minutes later, apparently on his way to work from an extreme game of Ultimate Frisbee in Dolores Park with a pit stop at the apartment to change clothes. He was huge and built and had dark brown skin and an intimidating mohawk, but when he grinned at Patrick and shook his hand, Patrick felt a lot less like the super-uncool kid who was always in danger of getting his ass kicked by the biggest dude in the room.